Dr Gerard Crotty has warned of an impending increase in the hospital mortality rate during a speech to delegates at the Irish Hospital Consultants Association annual conference.
Dr Crotty – president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) – commented during his keynote speech in Cork that patients are almost certainly dying unnecessarily while waiting for a hospital bed, and he referred his audience to international studies which show a 30 percent increase in the hospital mortality rate when patients are left on trolleys after the decision has been made to admit them.
Blaming an under-funding for creating the problem, Dr Crotty said that the health service was showing the strain after years of “easy cost-saving measures” and that a significant fall in day case patients was attributable to the inadequate stock of beds available to cater for the increased number of emergency cases. “I fear for what will happen as we enter the winter” the Doctor said, noting an increase of patients waiting in hospital emergency departments during one of the best summers for years.
Dr Crotty referred to the health service in Ireland as being in “intensive care” and he called upon the Government to significantly increase funding for frontline health services to avert a patient safety crisis. He said that patients deserve a better health service than currently exists and that a realistic budget is required to deliver safe, high quality care to patients without unacceptable delays which could ultimately result in their death.
In the same speech, Dr Crotty welcomed the acknowledgement by Health Minister Leo Varadkar that the 30 percent pay decrease for new entrant consultants had been a mistake and that it had undoubtedly worsened the crisis in the health service by reducing the attractiveness of senior medical positions. The President of the IHCA called for a complete reversal of the 30 percent pay cut to prevent newly graduating doctors from seeking positions overseas.
Also at the conference, Martin Varley – the Secretary General of the IHCA – said that a number of consultants who had signed work contracts in 2008 with the promise of increased salaries were taking legal action due to their pay increases failing to materialise. Under the agreements, consultants were due pay rises from €175,000 to €240,000 in 2009, but the pay rises were withheld when the economic crisis developed and the Department of Health reallocated the finance for other priorities.